Construction firms cite practicality, cost concerns in criteria for restarting work

Singapore

COMPANIES in the construction industry are concerned about higher costs and practicality of implementing new workflows and tightened measures at worksites and dormitories, even as they look forward to gradually resuming work under new criteria outlined on Friday by the Covid-19 multi-ministry taskforce.

Starting from June 2, some construction projects and suspended residential renovation works will be allowed to resume, subject to meeting certain safe-restart criteria. These include contact-tracing and regular Covid-19 testing for the workforce, as well as safe-distancing measures at worksites and dormitories.

Kurt Wee, president of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (ASME), said many companies will struggle to resume work quickly, as segments of their workforce may still be in quarantine come June. The new social distancing measures will also take time to implement and ingrain, up to four to six weeks which would stretch the sector's drought to three or four months in total.

Even after this period, projects will face capacity and cost challenges due to the measures. "Costs are going to go up, because obviously you need a much bigger space to house the workers, and need to have a lot more health and safety measures in place," said Mr Wee.

The Singapore Contractors Association Limited (SCAL) said that the measures announced on Friday are "very much in line" with discussions it has had with the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) over the past three weeks.

"Having said that however, there will still be many practical issues that will need to be ironed out, especially in workers' accommodation and implementing proper social distancing in transportation and at the worksites," said SCAL president Ng Yek Meng.

He acknowledged that projects will be delayed since only about 10 to 15 per cent of workers have been cleared to resume work, but added that a critical parameter is getting healthy workers into safe accommodation. SCAL is initiating a programme to identify alternative sites to house these workers.

Jay Chiu, managing director of interior fit-out and furnishing firm Grandwork Interior, said many companies will be eagerly working to meet the new criteria over the next two weeks. His company has already set up Quick Response (QR) codes at every worksite for contact-tracing purposes.

However, he highlighted that safe-distancing measures may sometimes be impractical. "Sometimes you need up to 10 workers to carry an item to be installed, and we cannot tell them that they must keep a safe distance of one or two metres apart. They will not be able to hoist it up," he said.

Other issues include how jobs normally done concurrently on smaller sites will have to be split into separate shifts, and workers whose skills are needed at different sites daily will not be able to do so under rules against cross-deploying workers.

Mr Chiu is considering running 24-hour operations, so that workers can remain separated while still getting the work done. "More costs will be incurred if we run 24 hours, but that's the only solution we can think of at the moment, in order to keep to the schedule and keep to the safety distances," he said.

While priority will be given to projects that are considered critical or time-sensitive, the government has said it will consider applications to resume non-priority projects that can be shown to have the necessary safeguards in place.

Goh Boo Kui, contracts director at Unison Construction, is hoping for greater clarity from the authorities as to what constitutes critical and time-sensitive projects. Two of the firm's projects involve basement construction, which he said could lead to weather-related safety issues if the work site is left dormant for too long.

However, the larger issue at hand is the challenge of sending all their workers for a swab test by June 2, as BCA requires all foreign workers to be tested for the virus before they can return to work.

Unison Construction has tried multiple times to contact the Ministry of Manpower and the Ministry of Health over the last three weeks to arrange for the tests, to no avail. Mr Goh believes the authorities may be swamped by requests or have reached their capacity to test more workers.

"If they don't do it for us, we can't just do the swab tests ourselves. We're not allowed to do swab tests ourselves," Mr Goh said.

Soilbuild Construction Group said the new measures are critical to ensure work can resume safely, but it foresees needing to set up more temporary quarters at its HDB build-to-order project in Yishun, in order to meet the new requirements for migrant worker dormitories. "The implemented measures will definitely reduce planned productivity, besides the reduced workforce, which will collectively impact the completion deadlines," said CEO Ganesh Soocelaraj.

The company will also look into recommencing projects that are not on the priority lists, and is planning additional housing and transport arrangements for those projects, he said.